glitter in the air
by believeinthegods
Summary: A thousand thoughts, a hundred characters, a dozen pairings - one ultimate oneshot collection. 8: when the weather got cold
1. ghosts

**_Title: _**_Ghosts_

**_Characters/pairing: _**_General/Percabeth references_

**_Warning/spoilers: _**_Post-TLO_

**_Song choice: _**_Wrapped In Piano Strings - Radical Face _

_**Summary: **"You think the dead we love ever __truly leave us_?'

_**Dedication**: For the girl who lies broken in hospital, and fights on. If words could heal you, I'd write a thousand more. Our thoughts are with you. _

* * *

i_ watched _**you**_ crawl into my _bed_,_  
_with _curses_ {spilling} from _your_** head**_  
_**you** said we're just the _walking dead_,_  
_so I pulled the trigger and we _[**floated**]_ off._

* * *

She follows him as he paces angrily between the mountains.

She can hear his mutterings from a few feet away. The weather blows past her, as usual, but his open aviator's jacket flaps in the heavy gale and she hears him curse it, loudly, as he tries bats the lapels away from his face.

_Language, Nico. _

He doesn't hear, of course, so he adds an extra _for fuck's sake _and _damn fucking coat _for good measure.

She winces.

He stops abruptly. He turns to kick a miniature figurine into a weighty pile of scrap metal with venom – the sharp clanging is loud and shrill. She catches a glimpse of his face. Older, now. Wiser. Worn. Darkness, always. Always darkness.

His eyes scan the scene, passing her by. Her heart leaps as he looks at her, _straight _at her, but he sees nothing and she really should know better. A moment of stillness befalls them, and all she can do is look at him. She feasts on his features, trying to memorize every curve, every indentation in her brother's young face. It's not enough.

And then, as usual, he glances down at the floor with shame and guilt shining in the tears in his dark eyes, and makes towards the metal mountain. He begins to climb.

He slips, once, and she calls out for him to _be careful, for goodness' sake._

The figurine is clutched in his palm within minutes, as usual. He stuffs it back in his pocket, towering over her at the summit of the scrap pile, and looks over the scene with the same strange expression on his face. And he whispers to the world –

_I miss you._

- and waits.

She blinks back tears. She calls out to her little lost brother, stood alone in this tiny corner of the world full of sadness and regret and broken dreams. He doesn't hear. He _can't _hear, and it breaks her heart.

* * *

_{and Bianca wishes that, for once, he'd hear her cries and know, and understand}_

* * *

He sits beside her as she cries.

_Don't, _he says, _please don't – _

She does, and it breaks his heart. Tears splash down upon the sand.

Her fingers trace the scythe about her neck with familiar caution, and he knows what she's thinking. The guilt ages her beautiful features by a thousand years, hanging at her cheekbones, dark circles ringing her watery eyes. He reaches for her, craving the warmth of her skin for some sort of release; his hand, silent as sin, turns to a whispery mist as it traces the soft curve of her jaw.

_I don't blame you, y'know. _

"I'm sorry," she says. And she says it again, over and over, chanting it to herself – and each time, her voice becomes shakier and shakier, until it finally cracks and she buries her face in her sleeves.

He leans closer. He can hear every tiny breath in minute, infinite detail. _I'll wait for you. _

* * *

_{She cries a thousand tears for the boy sat right beside her, and the ache in Beckendorf's chest throbs painfully} _

* * *

_i _[_sank_]_ into the _**sea**_,_  
_wrapped in **piano** strings,_  
_few _words_ could _{_open_}_ me,_  
_but _**you**_ knew them all._

* * *

The presence of the four boys almost brings her out in an immortal rash.

They amble home slowly and laboriously, with their school-bags thrown haphazardly over one shoulder as they make their way through the winding streets of Manhattan from the steps of Goode High School. She follows, within earshot but a little way behind. Old habits. Boys should be kept at arm's length.

"I'd go with Hendrix."

Some scoffing. The blond boy pulls a face. "Hendrix? What'd be the point?" he demands. "You'd be so high you wouldn't even remember _being _Hendrix."

"That's my _point_!" The freckled boy looks at the others in earnest. "You'd get the high without the low! If you only get to be him for a _day,_ you get to really _live_. But you don't have to deal with the comedown. That's heaven, man."

"Who's the one who's married to Megan Fox?" The boy on the furthest right, with dark skin and braids, grins at his companions, who laugh darkly in agreement.

"What about you, Jackson?" The long-haired youth glances at the boy nearest the road. "One day. Anyone at all. Choose wisely."

She watches closely as his brow furrows in thought.

"Someone old-school," he decides. "Like a hero or something."

"Why be a hero?" The freckled boy pulls a face. "I'd be a god!"

"You'd look great in a toga."

"Oh, ha-ha."

The boy with the braids looks thoughtful. "Y'know, he's got a point," he says. She narrows her eyes. "Those heroes got a pretty sweet deal, if you ask me. The glory, the girls... Bet Hercules never had to deal with Richards' surprise calculus pop quiz."

"Not Hercules."

The others glance curiously over at the boy now attempting to balance precariously on the edge of the sidewalk.

"What's wrong with Hercules?"

There's a pause.

"I..." The boy looks up, suddenly very aware that his classmates' eyes are fixed upon him. He coughs once. "He just seems like a bit of a douche-bag, that's all."

He gets a couple of weird looks, but they let it go and move on to talk about more pressing matters, such as the fact that Brandon Flowers is going solo (_thy name is most peculiar, Mr Flowers, _she thinks) and the Mets are doing pretty darn well this season.

* * *

_{Zoe Nightshade isn't quite sure what a douche-bag is, but she understands the sentiment and beams at the boy with the sea-green eyes} _

* * *

The task is simple enough – trap monster, bring back monster, cook monster, eat monster. Sounds manageable, he thinks. He glances over at his brother, and he knows exactly what he's thinking – he's wondering if giving the monster concussion will slow it long enough to drive a knife through its neck.

Chiron orders them to split into pairs.

It's a fairly predictable affair. Percy with Annabeth. Connor with Travis. Katie Gardner with Will Solace, which gets a wolf-whistle or three; Clarisse grabs Malcolm and thrusts an axe in his hands, which he promptly drops. The campers divide themselves easily, and soon they're all stood in twos, talking battle strategy and fixing armour.

Except one.

"Is anyone without a partner?" Chiron looks around at them all – no interruption comes, and so moves to give them all a bracing smile. "Excellent! Now, if you are all quite ready and suitably equipped – it gives me great pleasure to –"

One hand is slowly raised.

"Pollux, my boy?"

His brother winces, blushing a fiery scarlet and scuffing his sneaker sheepishly along the ground. "I don't have... Castor..." His voice trails off.

They all glance away uneasily.

Chiron clears his throat, clapping his hands jovially together. "Is anyone willing to have Pollux join their ranks?"

There's a moment's hesitation before Percy nods silently, and beckons Pollux over to join him. He watches Pollux move to stand nervously at the side of the duo – his rounded face is solemn, pain raw in his glassy eyes. It's a square-one situation. It always is.

* * *

_{Castor runs alongside him in battle, and cheers loudest of all when his brother's knife slices clean through the giant's neck, his face burning with unseen pride} _

* * *

He's seen a thousand of her nightmares.

The muffled sound of her gasps and groans breaks the spotless silence. She twists and turns, over and over again, never remaining in one position for more than a minute or so; her face is perfectly, perfectly pained. Blond hair tumbles loose from her braid – wild and dishevelled, it splays out across the scattered array of blankets and pillows about the bed.

_Percy_, she whispers.

He sighs.

He amuses himself with the idea that she's able to see him. He imagines her waking in shuddery tears and spying his figure, sat on the floor of her bedroom with his head resting in easy nonchalance against her bedside cabinet; the horror, the outrage, the sheer disbelief etched onto her beautiful features – he grins.

_Percy_, she murmurs again, and the smile slides quickly from his face.

She doesn't whisper his name anymore. He misses that.

It's getting worse. She tenses and suddenly cries out in pain. He watches, unmoved, his eyes fixed intently to her. What is she dreaming about, he wonders?

She thrashes out, arms and limbs flailing as if in spasm, snatching at her sleep as if her knife were to suddenly appear in her hand. Over and over she shakes her head, trying to fight off some invisible monster stood towering over the length of the bed.

A scream that makes him jump, and she's thrown violently forwards with a sharp jerk.

He moves towards the bed, clambering up on stiff limbs to go to her – but he hears footsteps racing for the door, and knows it's too late, far too late.

_His _arms are soon around her, with one hand in her ragged curls guiding her to _him_ as she breaks out into heartbroken sobs that echo around him.

He's stood, frozen, watching a world he longs to be a part of once more.

* * *

_{Luke Castellan would sell his soul to the devil for it, were his soul not the only thing he's got left – and he wants so desperately to cry and start again, and pretend it never happened}_

* * *

_**now** I just sleep beneath your _[_floor_]_  
my _ghost_ just tries to _**keep**_ you warm,  
I've **seen** the {end} I've lost the _**war**_,  
{one day you'll join me here just like the rest}_

* * *

_A/N ~ completed for Bookaholic711's writing challenge Project PULL. visit her profile for more information. _


	2. prayer

**_Title: _**_Prayer_

**_Characters/pairing: _**_Will Solace_

**_Warning/spoilers: _**_Post-TLO_

**_Song choice: _**_Papa, Can You Hear Me - Lea Michele/Barbra Streisand_

___**Summary: **Will Solace, on the journey to become the man he never knew he could be._

**_A/N: _**_This is based on the character of Will Solace, the eventual leader of the Apollo cabin, who heals Annabeth in The Last Olympian. It's a Will-centric oneshot, but it's sort of based around the characters of the Apollo cabin in general. It's a little angsty, but I hope it inspires you. Follow the prayers - see the contrast in them over the chapter. The next chapter will be a humorous one - I promise you that._

_**Dedication**: To a dear old fellow with the wit and audacity of a man eighty years his junior. I'm proud to call you friend, old chap._

* * *

**papa**, can you _hear _me?  
**papa**, can you _see_ me?  
**papa**, can you _find_ me in the night?  
**papa**, are you _near_ me?  
**papa**, can you _hear_ me?  
**papa**, can you _help_ me not be frightened?

* * *

The fumes of the burning shrouds filled in the air, and he took a shaky step forward towards a waiting Chiron.

The centaur looked down upon him kindly through age-old eyes, and it was if his heart was caught in his throat.

The low, quiet challenge: "Are you ready?"

The flickering flames danced quietly around him, and he trembled.

* * *

_Father, give me strength. _

* * *

He was shaking as Lee pulled the pair of them aside, just minutes before Kronos' men were to leap from the depths of the labyrinth; the tense anticipation was suffocating. Michael Yew, with his narrow features and short stature, looked almost comical in his many layers of armour as he approached, but Will couldn't bring himself to return the reassuring smile Michael proffered.

"Stay out of the action," Lee murmured. His eyes were fixed unwaveringly to the Labyrinth's entrance. "Stay high and only use your bows. They're going to need us to heal when all this is over."

"What about you?"

His face darkened. "Chiron wants me up front." He grimaced – his reluctance to follow his mentor's orders peppered his features, despite the feigned nonchalance in his tone. "He's got this…plan."

Michael scowled. "What kind of plan?"

"Just stay out of the way, okay?" His eyes flickered momentarily in the direction of Will's. "You will do that, won't you? You're both second-in-command. Spread the word to others, keep them out of the middle of the fight. Especially the young ones."

Michael nodded staunchly and stalked away, notching an arrow in his bow as he readied himself in his position. Will lingered behind awkwardly.

"Good luck." Lee gave him a brisk smile.

He bit his lip. "You too," he mumbled. "See you when all this is over."

Lee didn't reply. He raised his helmet and slid it quickly over his forehead. He gave him a swift slap on the shoulder, but all Will could see were his blue eyes, wrought with fear.

* * *

_Father, keep me safe._

* * *

His lips were bloodied and burnt – his breathing was distressingly laboured and shallow; Will's hands, shaking uncontrollably, grasped the sides of his brother's face tightly as he lowered the shuddered frame of Lee Fletcher to the ground.

"Go," he hissed. Blood was seeping from beneath his armour, staining the battered fabric of his shirt. Will made to try and steam the heavy flow, but Lee pushed him away with a shaky hand: "They need you, the battle isn't won –"

"I can heal you!"

"No!" Lee's eyes widened. Each breath seemed to strain him. His body was in spasm - movements erratic and wild; Will watched on, knelt by his side and frozen in terror. "It's too late –"

"It's isn't – I can do it, I can save –"

"Listen to me." Lee's hand grasped for his wrist, and the fervent pressure seemed to focus his frightened mind. "They're going to need – a leader, they'll need –"

The eyes of the two brothers met.

His whisper was barely audible: "Me?"

"They need –" He was gasping, gasping for air that couldn't come fast enough. His whole body was convulsing in agony. Will's shaky heart seemed to break, to tear at the sight of his brother's dying body in his arms. "They need – leader – you've got to –"

Over and over, he shook his head: "I can't – Lee, no, it's not –"

"You – _will _– lead. I know it, I've seen it, it's you!" Time was running out. Lee's eyelids were flickering, and terror gripped Will a-fresh. "Will... Will, it's cold, it's getting colder – Will -"

"I know," he whispered. Helpless, his eyes welled with tears. "I know. It's okay, it's going to be okay. It'll all be – okay –"

"Was I –" Lee's lips barely seemed to move as he fought to keep his eyes open for a moment, just a moment longer. "Was I a good...?"

He nodded fervently – hot tears spilled down his cheeks in earnest. "The best."

The sides of Lee's lips quirked upwards in a smile at his words; he seemed to say something, something more, but the sound was lost to the roar of the ongoing battle. In the distance, a monster bellowed; his eyelids closed, and Will felt the intense pressure of moments before at his wrist slacken - his heart, aching emptily, sank.

Lee Fletcher fell still, and he leant forwards, silently and carefully, to press a shaky kiss to his brother's brow; tears splashing down freely and unabashedly, onto the broken figure of his hero, as he whispered the stammered prayer -

_Father. Guide his soul. Guide me on. _

_- _and he cried out.

* * *

The cabin was still.

Candles littered the floor. Gleaming silently amidst the darkness and the gloom of the scene, they illuminated the shaky tear tracks adorning the cheeks of the twenty or so demigods scattered aimlessly across the room. Some younger figures clung to the arms of their older siblings. The deadly silence was agonizing; without release, the grief was raw and obstinate, plaguing each and every thought winding its way through Will's exhausted mind.

It was Kayla who spoke first: "What now?"

Some winced at the blunt intrusiveness of the challenge, but no-one dared reply. He was painfully aware of the few eyes that had darted in his direction, but their owners looked back away hastily before he had a chance to challenge them.

Michael Yew was stood beside him, still dressed in his weighty armour. "What d'you mean?"

Kayla frowned. "Well," she said, her brow furrowed. "We need a leader."

The candles themselves seemed to still. Will shifted slightly on the creaky floorboards, rubbing his sore neck with the sweaty palm of his hand.

A small first year camper raised her head from its resting place on a sibling's shoulder; she was small and slight, with a long dark braid, and her arm was propped up in a sling. Her name escaped him.

"You were with Lee. When he –" She sniffed. Collectively, the campers' heads seemed to bow, though whether this was a sign of respect or a weak attempt to hide a grief-stricken expression, Will didn't know. She bit her lip – a gentle pat on the shoulder from a senior camper seemed to cause her to compose herself. "What did he say? Did he choose someone to replace him?"

An irate growl came from the other side of the room. "No-one can replace him."

Will turned to see Daniel, a young second-year camper, clench his jaw angrily, glaring at the girl, whose face contorted in hurt. A murmur of agreement came as a low rumble in response – a few louder mutters, some snorts of disgust.

He made to calm them, but it was Michael who spoke first: "Easy, easy."

His voice, meek and mild, silenced them instantly. Will's heart seemed to clench.

"Will?" It was Austin, Kayla's brother, who called his name from a bottom bunk across the room. "What did he say? Who did he choose?"

He glanced once at the young girl in the sling; at Daniel, seething quietly a metre away; at his siblings, all starting intently, waiting for him to rise to the occasion. _They want me to be someone I'm not. _

His voice felt thick. "Michael." His heart was sinking, slowly, as he sat up a little straighter to ensure they had all heard. "He chose Michael."

There were nods and exchanged glances of approval. He looked up, reluctantly, to see a startled Michael try to hide a pleased smile; his very chest seemed to swell with pride.

He spent the remainder of the evening avoiding questioning glances and sitting, alone, in grave silence.

* * *

_Father, forgive me. _

* * *

**papa**, please _forgive _me

try to _understand_ me  
**papa**, don't you _know_ I had no choice?  
can you _hear_ me praying?  
anything I'm saying?  
{even though the night is filled with voices}

* * *

The emptiness of the cabin was too much for him. Unable to sleep, he snuck out to the amphitheatre, lost in deepest thought.

"You're a coward, Will Solace."

He glanced up. Kayla stood, a little ahead of him. Her fists were clenched angrily at her sides. Loose strands of blonde hair blew wildly in the midnight breeze.

Sighing, he turned back to his guitar. "I'm not in mood, okay, K?"

"No." Her voice shook. "No, it's not okay. There is no way Lee would've chosen Michael. No way on this earth. I'm sure of it."

"You don't know that."

"He chose _you, _didn't he?"

He said nothing.

"I've always had so much faith in you, Will." She glanced away, setting her jaw as tears of frustration swelled in her eyes. "Always. And you know what? You were fantastic out there today. The way you led us..." Her voice trailed off, her expression reflecting some strange kind of awe. "But you've let us down tonight, all of us."

"How?"

She snorted. "You really think Michael's going to lead us into battle? _Michael? _You know perfectly well that he –"

"Don't do this, Kayla, alright?" He glared up at her. "He's going to be fine!"

"But he's not –"

"Lee?" His tone was bitter. "Lee's gone. He's not coming back, and the sooner you realised –"

"That's not what I was going to say!" she said angrily. She fixed her stern gaze on his. "I was going to say that he's not _you_!"

"Me?"

"Yes, you! The leader Lee wanted – don't you dare deny it, Will Solace, don't you _dare_." Her voice was shaky, and her hand brushed away a stray tear that trickled loose down her cheek. "Lee's dying wish, but you're too cowardly to –"

"Just leave it!" He pushed his guitar aside feverishly. Kayla looked unfazed. There was shame and regret and a thousand accusations pressed to her pale skin, and he could scarcely bare to look at it.

He took a sharp breath. "I don't want to have this discussion with you. Michael's going to lead. That's it. End of. Nothing more..." His voice cracks. "Nothing more to say."

He snatched up his guitar before she can retort, and made for the exit, weightless and hollow. He heard her curse angrily, before turning to call after him:

"You can't hide from this forever, Will."

He shuddered.

* * *

_Father, help her see. Help her understand._

* * *

Michael led well. That's how he chose to see it. Michael was a good leader, the right leader. He was everything they could have hoped for.

He chose to ignore the temper and the pessimism and the impatience. It was easier that way.

_Father, guide him on his path (and let me always walk two steps behind)._

They rode in grim silence in the Camp van into New York.

Michael sat beside him, his forehead pressed to the glass. "We're going to give Kronos hell."

He nodded.

"Take Austin and James, maybe Di. They're our best archers. Take them high, a skyscraper or something. They can fire arrows from up there. The rest can stay low with me."

He frowned. It seemed a strange plan. "Only four archers?"

"You got a problem with that?"

"Don't you think we'd be better with more? Maybe the younger ones? Keep them out of harm's way? Maybe Lea, maybe Chris and Jo. They'd be better off out of the way."

Michael scowled. "Who's the leader here, Will?"

He felt cold.

"You. You are."

"Exactly." Michael turned back to the window. "Four archers. That's all."

The journey was icy, and a strange taste on his tongue (that might have been regret) simmered silently away.

* * *

_Father. I'm sorry. _

* * *

Little Lea was one of the first to fall.

Bitter anger, anger at himself, at Michael, at the world, rose up inside him, violent and tremulous.

* * *

_Father, what have I done?_

* * *

Weak and feverish, he stumbled from the balcony.

The healing had drained him, far more than ever before. He'd never done that before. Never. Cuts and scrapes, a couple of grazes, one broken toe – but a knife wound, an actual knife wound, _poisoned_? He would feel a sense of accomplishment, if he had the strength left in him to feel _anything_, anything at all.

He followed the solemn crowd of his cousins and siblings down the stairs of the Plaza to the ground floor, falling out into the night. Still, for the moment. Fatigue seemed to grasp his very bones.

"Will."

He winced at Austin's call, turning slowly to watch as the boy ran to him.

"You look awful," he remarked. Will nodded dully. "You been seeing to Annabeth?"

He nodded again.

"Is she okay?"

"She... will be."

Austin gave a grim smile. "We're going to need her. There's more coming."

"Then we'd better get ready." He cast a glance around them. "What kind of shape are we –"

Bodies, and blood, and carnage. He couldn't stop it, couldn't stop the steady flow of terrible images flooding his vision as he turned full circle amongst the debris. The last of his breaths seemed to catch in his aching lungs.

"I know." Austin shook his head, his round eyes shining. "And it's... It gets worse."

_Worse than this? _he thinks.

"Michael. He... The Williamsburg Bridge, they think – he's not –"

_No. Not him._

_Not now._

"He's –?" He couldn't bring himself to say it. It wasn't true. It wasn't. He would know, he would – feel it, somehow – "He can't be. No, he was with Percy – he was fighting with Percy, and Annabeth, and they –"

"We don't know... We can't find his – body. It's not... but we think he's... He's nowhere, he's not _anywhere_ -"

He closed his eyes, and grief seemed to strike him as if like lightning. He fought the shaking of his knees, beckoning him to the hard concrete below.

"We need a leader," Austin murmured. The dark smears of ash and powdered rubble aged him – he could have been twenty, thirty years older. "Now, more than ever. And it's got to be you. It can only be you."

He couldn't think, couldn't feel, couldn't take it in all in fast enough.

"Austin, I can't –"

"Don't want to hear it." He sniffed. "Not now. Later, maybe. But for now, man up and get your ass out front. You're our leader now. And there's pretty much fuck all you can do about it."

Something seemed to strike him once more – but this was not a lightning bolt, a sharp piercing pain; it was a heavy, burdened realization that seemed to fall upon him in a moment.

He found himself nodding, relenting, being dragged away to a destiny he hadn't thought about it a long time, a very long time.

* * *

_Father. Please. _

* * *

"For Apollo!"

They heard, they followed, they charged.

Pride swelled up inside of him, unlike anything he'd ever felt before.

* * *

_Father, can you see us? Can you see how we fight in your name? _

* * *

They won – but in many ways, they lost.

* * *

_Father, help us remember the lost, the fallen. Help us move on. They need you._

_And stop pissing about with the new Oracle and her stereo system. Please, try to prioritize. _

* * *

The ceremony was Percy's idea. It's more a formality than anything else, but the very thought of it brings him out in a mental rash.

"Why are you so worried about it?" They sat on the steps of the Apollo cabin at dusk – Kayla sharpening her knife in the dull sunlight, Will doing little but chew nervously at his bottom lip.

"I don't know."

"You've been acting leader since the battle." She scuffed the stone along the blade's edge. "What's the big deal about making it official, again?"

"I don't know."

She rolled her eyes. "Look. You've faced much worse than a stupid leadership inauguration ceremony this summer. Are you too chicken to stand up in front of everyone and be the person we both know you are, for once in your life?"

"I don't know."

She poked him with the blunt end of the knife. "_I _know. You're going to get up there tonight and be the guy you should have been a year ago."

That hurt.

"I'm sorry, K."

She sighed happily. "I know. I just love to torment you. Sorry. It's a sister thing." She smiled again, and he managed a shaky one in return.

They lapsed into momentary silence, and she turned back to her knife.

He shrugged. "I guess..."

A pause. "You guess what?"

"I..." He hesitated. And then he shifted slightly on the step, drumming his fingers fretfully along his knees. "Do you think I'm a good leader?"

Kayla smiled. Her eyes raised to his. "The best."

He felt a lump rise to his throat.

She watched him closely. "Will you do it?"

His eyes found the sun in the looming distance, and its warmth seemed to fill up his hollow heart in a sudden rush.

* * *

_Father. Now, I understand._

* * *

The low, quiet challenge: "Are you ready?"

The flickering flames danced quietly around him, and he trembled.

_Father, give us strength._

He nodded, and he felt a swell of strength surge at his fingertips.

* * *

**god**  
_oh god_  
may the light  
illuminate the night  
{the way your spirit illuminates my soul}

* * *

_A/N ~ completed for Bookaholic711's writing challenge Project PULL. visit her profile for more information._


	3. second chances first impressions

**_Title: _**_Second Chances (First Impressions)_

**_Characters/pairing: _**_Rachel and Annabeth; Percabeth references_

**_Warning/spoilers: _**_Small-TLH spoilers_

**_Song choice: _**_Hey, Soul Sister - Train_

_**Summary: **Girls night out? Annabeth? With Rachel Elizabeth Dare? No way. Absolutely not. _

**_A/N: _**___As you'll know (if you've read TLH), Rachel and Annabeth are quite firm friends in The Lost Hero, and I wanted some kind of explanation for that... I guess I didn't buy the whole Rachel-becomes-the-Oracle-so-Annabeth-and-Rachel-become-BFFs logic. It's set with a backdrop of Percabeth, post-Last Olympian and pre-Lost Hero... I'm not too pleased with it, but I'll leave it for you guys to judge. It's a nice break to the angst of previous chapters... Thanks for the prompt from Roxy!_

_**Dedication**: For my little globe-trotting buddies. I miss you guys already!_

* * *

"How do I look?"

She turns away from the mirror slowly, hesitantly.

He grins at her from across the other side of the room, leant up against the door frame with his hands tucked meekly in his pockets. "Great."

She bites her lip. "Fit for a girls' night out from hell in some sweaty, noisy bar with the girl who used to be madly in love with my boyfriend?"

He looks her up and down carefully, a poorly suppressed smirk playing on his lips. "Absolutely."

* * *

It's a sense of duty, more than anything, that drives her to write the damn letters in the first place (and perhaps a teeny tiny inkling of guilt, though she will fervently deny it upon interrogation).

The first letter is polite and somewhat forced to begin with, starting with a mandatory _hey! _and _how are you? _(She was going to start with _hey, it's Annabeth – remember me? I'm the girl from the battle at the apocalypse last summer! - _but decides it's probably a pretty redundant thing to say. Who forgets the battle to save the world from destruction, for the gods' sake? And how many Annabeths is Rachel likely to know? Plus, she can't even _spell _apocalypse).

She isn't really expecting a reply, so when the letter in a fancy _Clarion Ladies _cream-and-gold envelope appears one Wednesday morning, she almost chokes on her cereal.

They soon establish a tit-for-tat mechanism between them after a few letters or so. She'll offer some trivial information about her school, her homework, the weather in New York – Rachel, in turn, will duly reply, writing about the horrors of finishing school and the monotony of New Hampshire life. It's civil and cordial – Annabeth pointedly keeps any mention of Percy from the letters for fear of triggering some sort of unnecessary _emotional _reaction – and after six or seven months of fairly frequent correspondence she's feeling fairly confident with the whole situation, and any feeling of bitterness and resentment slowly and surely start to ebb away.

Until a letter arrives, mid-March, that curdles her metaphorical milk.

_I'm coming to the city in a couple of weeks, _Rachel writes. _Maybe we could hang out?_

She freezes, and her eyes fall to those three terrible worlds that follow, separated by an ominous gap and indentation:

_Girls' night out?_

She feels sick.

* * *

It's Percy who talks her into it. Secretly, she curses him for it, because she's pretty sure he's delighted at the idea of her and Rachel finally getting along and sees it as his personal duty to ensure the two became the best of friends.

"What's the problem?" he asks, and lets her steal a spoonful of his ice cream. The café is quiet, only a few people left scattered about the room with yawning waiters placing upside down chairs precariously across freshly scrubbed table tops. "So you spend the evening with Rachel. Big deal! She's nice."

She shoots him the death glare. "I hate girls' nights out. It's loud, and awkward, and it always ends with strangers projectile barfing on you from across the sidewalk with their dresses pulled down to their waists."

He begins to choke on the ice-cream, so she takes the opportunity to swipe another mouthful, which earns her a carefully placed poke in the ribs. "But you _know _Rachel," he complains, watching as she dodges out of the way of his prying fingertips. "It's not like you'd be going out with a complete stranger." So it won't _be_ awkward."

She hates his _reasonable _voice.

"Correction." She licks some ice-cream from her forefingers. "_You _know Rachel. She's barely an acquaintance to me."

He pulls a face. "You got on with her perfectly well last summer."

"That was different. _You _were there. If we go out now, just the two of us, it's just her and me and a whole evening of agonizing, painful, arduous, _tedious –"_

"Look. Quit the thesaurus crap. If you just don't _like _Rachel…"

"Oh, don't be such a Seaweed Brain, you know that's not what this is about. We have a… history. That's all."

"That's what this is about?" he demands, turning in disbelief. "Something that happened nearly two _years _ago?"

She scowls.

"So you guys have a history! That doesn't matter."

"It matters to me!" she says hotly. He rolls his eyes, and so she scoops the biggest wedge of chocolate ice-cream she can manage and rejoices in his outrage. A sigh, and he's surrendering the bowl with the remainder of the contents to her.

"Don't you think it's time you guys put this behind you?" She looked up from the bowl to find his gaze fixed pleadingly to hers. "You're both practically adults now. Isn't it time you… started acting like one?"

She's pretty sure she hates him at that point in time. She hates that he's being rational, that he's pretending _he's _the mature, rational one in the relationship, that he's almost certainly just given her his ice-cream to bribe her into consenting.

_Bastard._

"Fine," she grumbles. "I'll go on the stupid night out -"

He dances in mock-celebration.

"- but I refuse to enjoy it."

He grins victoriously, standing and proffering his hand as she glares resentfully up at him. "It's all I'm asking."

She puts the bowl in his outstretched hand and sticks her tongue out at him.

* * *

"How about this?" They're driving in his car on the way to the bar where she's supposed to be meeting Rachel, and she thinks he's just noticed the sickening shade of green she's turning as they get closer and closer to their destination. "If it gets to about half eight and you're still having a crappy time, you can text me, and then I'll call you. Some demigod emergency or something to get you out of there."

She blinks. "Percy. That's brilliant."

"I saw it on _Friends_."

"Okay, so that's _less _brilliant." They pull up outside the bar and the car grinds to a halt. She chances a glance outside and groans loudly.

"It's just a few hours. And then you never have to step foot in this place again."

She sighs, grappling for the car door and pushing it out into the night.

"Hey." She turns to look at him, all bracing smile and kind eyes, and really wishes her evening was going to be spent watching crappy movies with him on a couch with two many cushions and popcorn that hasn't quite popped properly. With a reluctant sigh she kisses him, long and soft, before taking a steady breath.

She clambers from the car and approaches warily as his engine revs in the background.

* * *

The bar is noisy and neon, and the imminent feeling of dread bubbles noisily away in the pit of her stomach with alarming intensity.

Rachel looks nice – dark blue dress and Converse with colourful homemade decorations – and the conversation starts off genial enough; she mumbles about school, prophecies, recent monster battles, but it all dwindles to nothingness fairly quickly. The drinks arrive and they taste like the River Styx itself, but she drinks hers in three big gulps anyway.

Rachel, she decides, is way too buoyant. She's _smiling. _Like a huge, dislodged-your-coat-hanger-and-slotted-it-in-between-your-cheeks smile. She wonders if the Dare industries also specialize in fake IDs, and exactly how many drinks Rachel's already had before she arrived.

The heavy bass shakes the very room.

"How's Percy?" she yells cheerily over the sound of the nearby DJ decks. Annabeth feels her face flush.

"He's fine," she mutters.

"What?"

She clears her throat, raising her voice a few decibels: "I said he's fine."

Rachel nods, and they lapse into awkward silence again, with Rachel humming merrily along with the music.

The girl is _still _smiling. It's unnerving. She glances away, glad that at least Rachel appears to be having a good time, and orders another drink, praying it's going to be her last.

"So what d'you want to do?" Rachel's voice in her ear. She shrugs uncertainly, toying with a loose strand of hair.

What are they _supposed _to do? Go bar to bar? Dance? She's not a fan of either suggestion. There's a few guys stood over the other side of the room who've been watching the pair of them for a while, but their current relationship statuses – in a relationship and eternally celibate – limit _that _particular option.

She finds herself reaching into her clutch-bag, grappling for her cell (she's lasted approximately twenty minutes. That's good enough, she decides) and types a hasty message to Percy out of Rachel's sight:

_Get me out of here!_

She looks up to see Rachel gesturing towards the crowded dance floor a few metres away. "You want to dance?" she asks cheerily.

The honest answer is a defiant _no_, but she opts for her a nervous _I'm not really sure please don't make me do this _look.

"Come on, it'll be fun!" Rachel takes her arm and tugs her away, which she's totally _not _okay with with, and they move towards the dance area, where the music is louder and there's limbs and hair flailing all over the place in a million and one different directions.

_I'm in Hades, _she thinks.

* * *

Thirty minutes later and the knife stashed up her sleeve is starting to look awfully tempting.

Rachel is grinning, out of breath and all danced out, as they move to just near the door as the track changes once more. "That's was way too much fun," she pants, and Annabeth nods in false agreement, feigning a smile that sort of hurts, a little bit.

She drags out her cell once more. _Come on, Seaweed Brain. _She really, _really _wishes she hadn't come. The sweat, the noise, the awkwardness, the whole _scene _is just -

"Are demigods allowed to have cell-phones?"

She jumps, glancing up to see Rachel frowning slightly. "Um… no." She blinks. "I guess not… Not really."

"Bad-ass."

She sort of smiles.

"Nice wallpaper."

It's her turn to frown. "What?"

Rachel takes a sip of her drink, gesturing at Annabeth's cell screen. "Your background. It's a Michelangelo piece, right?"

She's a little taken aback, but Rachel's wide eyes look sincere enough, so she nods. "It used to be Percy," she admits. She's not sure why, "but the girls at school used to ask…"

"Nosy as hell, right?" Rachel's nodding, and her green eyes are wide with something that (if Annabeth's not mistaken) looks like sympathy. "I have like this prophecy journal where I write down everything I see or any visions I get because apparently giving the Oracle of Delphi a good memory is too much to ask for the immortal powers that be, and all the girls at school are always trying to get me to tell them what I'm writing in, what it's about, like it's any of their business." She shakes her head. "So annoying."

"I know the feeling," she agrees. She slides her cell tentatively into her bag. "You… like Michelangelo?"

"I guess so. I saw the Sistine Chapel once, that was amazing… Though I'm going through a real Renaissance phase at the moment - no, wait, I'll tell you what I like at the moment –" Rachel dives into her bag and brings out a folded piece of paper, quickly opening and offering Annabeth the paper to see. "This is the painting I'm obsessed with at the moment, it's called _Lake Keitele_ and I _love _it. It's by this Finnish painter –"

"Gallen-Kallela!" she exclaims loudly, and a party-goer next to her shoots her a disgusted look – she brushed her off, too suddenly gripped my a strange jittery feelings as she closely examines the painting in her hand. "This piece, I have it on a book and on my wall – it's one of my favourites - "

"No way."

"Seriously!"

"That's worthy of a high-five for sure." Rachel offers her a hand to hit, so she does, if a little tentatively. "So you're into post-impressionism?"

"Kind of, I guess." She glances down at her shoe. "I like pointillism, some of Seurat's work. I tried to incorporate it into one of my designs for the Olympian throne room, but they want Da Vinci-esque work, big murals and everything."

"Old school." Rachel wrinkles her nose disapprovingly. "Cliché."

She gapes. "That's exactly what I said! But apparently anything past about the 18th century isn't Zeus' style, and he'd blast me to Hades if I defied him."

"I'd just do it. A little Dali, surrealism never goes down well with the classics fans - some Lichenstein, maybe – they wouldn't know what's hit them."

"Zeus is one guy I like to keep on my good side. You're braver than me if you'd risk pissing _him _off."

Rachel grins into her glass. "Come on. You're talking to the blue hairbrush bandit."

She has to stop herself, mid-laugh.

_What are you doing? Stop enjoying yourself. You have principles to uphold! _

"I didn't even know you liked _art_," Rachel says, in awe – they head towards the bar, sliding onto the stools. Annabeth's feeling slightly weightless. "Do you draw? Or paint?"

"I… draw, a little. Buildings and stuff, mostly. Sometimes people, but not…often." She doesn't surrender that fact readily – she's mortified at the very idea of anyone asking to see her sketches. Architecture plans, yes. Portraits, absolutely not. "Not half as well as you."

_Is this drink alcoholic? Principles, Annabeth. Stop. Being. Social._

"Oh, don't! You can't talk – I've seen those plans for Olympus, they're fantastic. The detail blew me away." She looks wistful. "You have to have epic technical skills to be able to do that, you know. I was so jealous I nearly made up a prophecy with you dying a horrible, gruesome death-by-shark-attack."

"Come on. You're Rachel Dare. You're the artist in residence."

Rachel presses her fingers to her ears, screwing up her face tightly with closed eyes. "Stop it! Compliments bring me out in hives."

She finds herself saying chattily, conversationally – amicably, even, like she's forgotten where she is and who she's speaking to: "You know, there's been a post-impressionist exhibition on at the MET at the moment, it closed today. I tried to drag Percy along, but if the paintings aren't of _The Simpsons _it's a nightmare to try and get him to go."

_Where is this coming from? _her subconscious whispers. _You're... being friendly._

It's terribly unsettling.

"I can imagine." Rachel removes the fingers from her ears and takes a long sip of her drink. "He once fell asleep in a Van Gogh exhibition. Whilst stood up."

She rolls her eyes. "That sounds like Percy."

* * *

The small talk is getting easier and easier - they stick to art, mainly, until Rachel suddenly seems to have an idea.

"Hey, when does that exhibition finish?"

"Today, I think."

Rachel frowns.

"I know, right? It looked amazing."

The Oracle looks down at her watch, to the painting, and back up to a bemused Annabeth; there's a glint in the green of her eyes that spells trouble, and she's pretty sure it's not from the glare of the rave lights.

"You want a private screening of a post-impressionist exhibition?" she asks.

She narrows her eyes. "What are you thinking?"

Annabeth can't help but worry for the future of the human population, as what can only be described as a grin of purest evil spreads across the face of Rachel Elizabeth Dare.

* * *

When she imagined their evening and the series of events that were to follow, not once did she imagine breaking into the Metropolitan Museum of Art in the middle of the night using nothing but a Yankees cap and a couple of clicks of her fingers.

_I'm pretty sure this isn't real life._

"You ready on the lights?"

"Sure thing."

Rachel spreads her arms forward. "Let there be light!"

Annabeth throws the switch, and the room is flooded with a buttery yellow glow.

"Woah."

The painting nearly reaches the ceiling – thirty foot of majesty, gazing down at them from dizzying heights. They stand, shoulder to shoulder, looking up in awe at the sheer enormity of the painting in all its glory.

"Beautiful," she whispers, and out of the corner of her eye Rachel nods in agreement.

Silence falls, but in reverence. The awkwardness of past hours is long gone – they stand, windswept and reasonably disheveled, in bare feet as they gaze up at the swirls of a thousand colours on the wall opposite.

Her cell rings. She reaches for it slowly, raising it dreamily to her ear: "Hello?"

"Demigod emergency! Monster on Fifth, it's tearing the mortals apart!" His voice is theatrically loud and panicky. "It's part dragon and part hippopotamus and part rhino and - and part something else that's scary – a lion, part lion! You've got to come quick! We need you!"

"Seaweed Brain –"

"Aaargh! My arm! It's eaten my arm! Nooooooo-!"

She smirks, and hangs up. Rachel turns, looking curious.

"Such a Seaweed Brain," she mutters.

Rachel laughs.

She's not had time to sit and figure it all out yet. She considers not trying to.

* * *

They sit on a park bench nearby, watching the sunrise slowly start to envelope the city in morning sunshine.

"You want to know something?" She's sleepily content, sat cross-legged with her hair loose around her shoulders. "I really didn't want to come tonight."

"I know."

She shoots Rachel a questioning glance.

"Bitch, please. I'm the Oracle."

She snorts. "You can't pull that off."

She holds her hands up in mock-defeat. "Okay, okay," she says, "but I knew you weren't going to want to come. And that Percy was going to have to talk you into coming. I even knew what you were going to _wear_, for crying out loud." She pauses. "Y'know, I sort of miss the element of surprise in life."

She looks outraged: "Did you know we'd become criminals, too?"

The Oracle merely grins.

She toys with the words on the tip of her tongue. "I had a great time tonight. Thanks." A blush rises to her cheeks as she traces patterns in her skirt slowly, carefully. "And I'm glad Percy talked me into coming. But don't tell him that. He's not allowed to be right."

Rachel chuckles. "And to think, you thought it was too awkward to even _mention _Percy."

The blush burns fiercely. She looks over shiftily to see Rachel lain out on the pavement with her hands behind her head, as if sunbathing in early morning light, with an amused expression playing her elfish features. "It's nice that you were worried about how I'd feel about it all."

"I just didn't…" She sighs. "I guess I –"

"I know." Rachel props herself up on her elbows, the freckles on her shoulders dancing as she wriggles to get comfortable. "It was always going to be a bit… weird, at first. We didn't exactly get off on the right foot. But that's all in the past. And I guess… I'd kind of like it to stay there."

"Me too." Relief floods through her, and suddenly a tight, tense knot in her chest seems to release, spreading warmth to the very ends of her fingertips.

And a moment, she considers apologizing. For everything - for tonight, for everything that happened two years ago. She should, she knows. It's the right thing to do. She's put Rachel through a lot of shit before now, and the decent, _moral _plan of action would be to apologize for it.

But she doesn't. Maybe because she's Annabeth Chase, and apologizing for being wrong is something she's not at all comfortable with in any way, shape or form. Or maybe it's because she's pretty sure Rachel knows what she would say if she had the guts, and saying it aloud... well, it would be kind of pointless now, anyway.

Rachel yawns, loudly. "Y'know, we should do this again sometime. Break into a national landmark."

"Sounds great," she grins. "Maybe next time we can go for the Pentagon."

"Too easy. I'll try for the White House."

When they laugh, it's easy and it's natural. That's a pretty wonderful feeling.

* * *

"How do I look?"

She turns away from the mirror, grinning.

He shoots her the thumbs up from across the other side of the room, leant up against the door frame. "Great."

She raises an eyebrow. "Fit for committing the crime of forced entry into a high security art gallery in the name of surrealist appreciation?"

Rachel peeks her head around the door frame, looking on in approval. "Absolutely."

* * *

_A/N ~ completed for Bookaholic711's writing challenge Project PULL. visit her profile for more information._


	4. boner

_**Title: **Boner_

_**Characters/pairing:** unrequited!Nico/Annabeth _

_**Warnings/spoilers**: Post-TLO_

**_Song choice: _**_Hand Covers Bruise - The Social Network soundtrack_

_**Summary**: Nico plays hero in Annabeth's hour of need... in a shower-room. Confessions are made. Awkwardness ensues._

_**A/N**: Set maybe two years after the end of TLO, with no real reference to the events in the Heroes of Olympus series. It's an experimental sort-of piece, and even though it says Nico/Annabeth, it's more an exploration of teenage!Nico going through some pretty teenage changes and having some pretty teenage thoughts. Sort of inspired by Mark/Juliet in Love Actually. Enjoy._

**_Dedication: _**_To Penny (MyPenIsSharperThanYourSword) because she's too lovely. One might even say... groovy._

* * *

He's just sliced about three dozen dummies into tiny worthless pieces and kicked some serious simulated monster butt, and he's feeling pretty damn heroic as he's heading back to the Hades cabin (if he does say so himself).

So when he hears a high-pitched scream coming from the direction of the girls' shower-room, he's in knight-in-shining-armour mode and ready to _rock (_metaphorically).

He's in there like a flash, skidding around the corner on the wet floor (power slides. They're intentional power slides), following the sound of the girl's voice crying out for help over the thunder of the water in the furthest stall.

And he's about to burst in, all Stygian Iron and mad son of Hades skillz, when it suddenly occurs to him he's in a _girl's shower room _and the damsel in distress currently languishing in terror just feet away is probably going to be totally head-to-toe naked - and suddenly he grinds to a squeaky and sudden halt.

One part of his brain is thinking how he really probably should not be here because if Bianca were ever to find out, she'd be beyond horrified – and the other part is thinking _cool, naked girls in a shower room._

He bites his lip, because he can feel a smile brewing somewhere in his lower facial region, and chooses instead to call out a hesitant, "Hello?"

"Get your ass in here and _help _me!" cries the female voice, and she sounds like he's pretty sure she's as close as can be to freaking the fuck out.

He hesitates: "Are you – um –"

"I'm wearing a towel, for the gods' sakes - just get the Hades in here before I – _oh, holy shit!"_

He makes a momentary executive decision, and bursts into the stall with his best bad-ass-mother-fucker roar and sword raised aloft, ready to send the unknown foul beastie to Tartarus the hard way -

"I –"

There's no monster. At least, not a visible one.

"What the –?"

The voice, much closer now, screeches: "Over _there_!"

He looks up to see Annabeth Chase, in nothing but a towel, dripping wet and pointing to something a few yards from her bare feet and he's pretty sure his jaw is scraping the floor right about now.

_Hades have mercy - _

"The _spider_!" she exclaims, terrified – she's cowering against the tiling, eyes wide with fear. Bewildered and totally bemused, he blinks, trying to take it all in – the pounding of the water, Annabeth's shudders, the spider lurking somewhere in the tiny stall –

His eyes linger a little too long on one particular aspect of his surroundings.

_holy shit holy shit Annabeth in a towel_

"Nico, come _on!"_

He manages to just about tear his eyes away from _holy shit holy shit Annabeth in a towel _long enough to spy a tiny black creature stood motionless a little way away.

Careful not to look anywhere remotely near _holy shit holy shit Annabeth in a towel, _he takes a few steps forward and tries really really hard to breathe as he flicks the spider wordlessly down the drain with the tip of his sword.

The water from the shower head grinds to halt, and suddenly it's quiet; the only sound being the two of them panting, gasping for air. He hears Annabeth breathe a steady sigh of relief.

He swallows - hard.

He steps back into the corridor and stows his sword with a shaky hand back into his pocket, adrenaline still coursing through him with frightening tenacity.

There's a silence for a beat, maybe two, before –

"Thank the _gods_..."

- and that's where he makes the mistake of looking up again.

She's adjusting her towel a little as she tries to compose herself, dragging it slightly higher up her chest– her hair, darkened and dishevelled, is cast haphazardly over one shoulder as she shivers slightly from the damp. Her skin is a light, perfect bronze, pockmarked only by miniature water droplets like freckles and a hazy scar a little below her neck; he spies delicate tan lines at her shoulders and lower thighs, and his eyes trace the curves of her calves, her collar bone, the gentle depression that stops just as the towel starts, with the slope of her –

_Oh, fuck fuck fuck – _

He turns, abruptly, because a certain part of his anatomy has suddenly awoken and he's acutely aware that something is happening downstairs that really shouldn't be happening right about now.

- _fuckity fuck fuck fuck – _

"Nico?" He squints, screwing his face up while desperately trying to think of something else, like dead rats or – or fermented cheese – or – "Thanks. Sorry for... freaking out." She sounds ashamed, breathing slowly returning to normal, but he's kind of got other problems going on right now that require his immediate attention (_shit, why do I insist on wearing skinny jeans why for the love of God -)_

"Are you... okay?"

"Mmmerghhhh -" He winces, filled with a sudden, burning self-loathing, and suddenly tenses as he hears her footsteps move a little closer to him. He imagines the concern etched onto her (_fucking perfect_) features and it's killing him, one tiny miniscule little cell at a time, as he attempts moves awkwardly and abruptly away, his back to her in the corridor of the shower room.

_Just got a boner looking at my friend's half-naked wet girlfriend. _

He's seriously considering drowning himself at this moment in time.

"Nico, seriously, you're – you don't look okay, do you need me to call for somebody?" She's anxious, worried about him and the fact that he looks like he's in agony right about now, and if anything that makes it all the worse.

"I –" He steadies himself against the wall with a quivering hand, eyes shut tight. She's coming closer and closer, wanting to check if he's okay - "No, I – I'm just –"

"Are you hurt? You look –"

"- I', okay?" he half-shouts, and his face burns a fierce, ferocious red...

"Because I can get one of the Apollo kids to – wait, what?"

He shakes his head, trying to recover, to gain control and steady himself, a little bit. _Hey, dad, if you want to do the whole ground swallow me up thing anytime soon, that'd be great. _

The silence that follows is beyond excruciating.

He forces himself down onto the bench on the opposite wall with his fists clenched tightly, his head in his hands as the tightening in his pants seems to slowly lessen - he mutters inaudibly to himself and wishes he was somewhere far away or possibly dead because either way he wouldn't be here at this exact point in time which would be really rather fucking fantastic.

Except he _is _here, and it's like awkward city.

A minute passes before she sits, a little way down from him, and he can feel her gaze burning into him.

"...Nico?"

_Pretend you're not here._

"Did you – um -"

He's not too sure what the appropriate response is, so he sort of nods into his hands.

"Oh." It's all she can say. He doesn't really blame her.

And now he's guessing he's not the only one thinking _ground swallow me up _thoughts right about now.

It comes out muffled: "Um, could you maybe leave me alone?"

She doesn't budge.

There's another pause, just as tense. Everything's back to normal, _downstairs, _but something has suddenly changed between them that's painfully obvious.

He sighs into his hands. "Mmsorry."

It's pretty obvious she's thinking of a tactful reply.

"It's okay," she says gently. _Well chosen, _he thinks bitterly. "It's... y'know. A human thing. It's not something you've got any control over."

_You have no idea._

Her foot makes a squeaking noise as it traces over the wet tiling. "How about we just pretend this never happened? You never came in here. There was no spider. End of. A one-off."

It's possibly the worst thing she could've said – and he knows, at this precise moment in time, that this is his window, and that if he doesn't say something now then he's probably going to regret it for a really long fucking time.

She's standing and straightening up, going to reach for her clothes because she's expecting him to leave. He looks pointedly away as she changes.

_Now or never._

He takes a deep breath –

"Annabeth, I –"

- and bottles it.

He can hear the rustling of clothing. "Yeah?"

Quick pause. "Nothing."

"Oh, come on, I'm not in the mood to play games. You said my name. And then I."

"I was just... saying," he mumbles. "What?"

"What d'you mean, _what_?"

"You said _and then I."_

She scowls. "I was repeating what _you _said."

"Oh."

He wipes his sweaty hands on his jeans.

"So I'm going to go –"

"Wait! You haven't told me what you were going to say?"

"When?"

"The thing! The thing you were going to say when you said _Annabeth, I _!" He glances over as she appears over the top of the stall, her arms folded over her chest, affronted; her expression is one of sheer exasperation.

It's kind of pretty exasperation, though.

He sort of stands there like a tree (or something else that stands), and says nothing, feeling his insides withering under her piercing glare.

"Fine. Whatever." She sighs as she turns back away from him, grabbing the rest of her possessions – a knife, a pair of sneakers (_and fuck, is that a bra?). _"See you around, Nico."

She's steps out into the corridor, trying to sort her hair out with one hand as she lowers herself to the ground, and starts scrambling around with a bunch of soap bottles and shampoo. Completely inelegantly and with no grace whatsoever, of course. Her hair sort of falls haphazardly to one side as she slips and curses on the wet floor.

It sort of slips out.

"I kind of love you."

She's having trouble lifting about five bottles up off the floor in slippery hands; it's evident she's only half-listening, but he's acutely aware of everything from the blood pulsing in his forehead to his fingertips quivering nervously. "What?

"I just – I've just been in love with you every day since I was eleven and I thought I should probably tell you."

He tucks his hands in his pockets and sort of rocks on his heels, and he's not feeling very heroic anymore. In fact, he's feeling the total opposite.

And she's _still _pissing about with the damn shampoo bottles – they clatter about on the floor as she tries to snatch them all up, dropping one as she goes to pick up another and balance one more in the crook of her elbow.

"Not like it matters, or anything," he adds, a little louder. "I just thought it was something I should probably get off my chest at some point and now seemed like a good time, y'know? Because our friendship is kind of ruined for the rest of eternity now anyway because I got hard when I saw you nearly-naked so there's really no more damage I could do by telling you all this. So... yeah. Just. For the record. I like you, a lot. And kind of always have."

Three bottles fall to the floor simultaneously and she curses: _shit!_

"So... that's about it." His hair's sort of falling in front of his eyes again, but his hands are kind of jammed into his pockets so he can't wipe it away. Plus they're shaking too much to be any use to anyone. "If you want to... add something, that'd be... cool." Rock-rock-rock, backward and forwards.

Finally, she manages to lift all five of the damn bottles and straighten up, her back to him.

"...Annabeth?"

_Now _she responds, glancing over her shoulder at him as she holds her belongings tightly to her chest. "Yeah?"

"Did you – um, listen to anything that I said?" he asks.

She looks down to check she's got everything. "Yeah. I did."

Casually. Like he hasn't just stood in front of her and admitted that he falls asleep thinking about what it'd be like to kiss her on the lips and if she has a freckle on the small of her back and if so if he could kiss that, too.

"And did you..." _Don't gulp, _he thinks. He gulps. "...did you have anything to say?"

She sighs. And pauses. And places the big pile of her possessions on the bench slowly, carefully.

"You're not in love with me, Nico," she says, a little sadly.

He imagines this is what a knife wound to the heart must feel like, and imagines the blood dripping onto his shoelaces.

He hates that he sounds like a child: "I'm not?"

"No."

"Not even... a little bit?"

She shakes her head.

Relief. Irritation. Confusion. All flooding his consciousness, in equal measure. "...are you sure?"

"I'm sure."

"..."

He wonders how rich he'd be if he'd had a dime for every awkward moment in the last eight minutes, and if he'd have enough money to buy a really cool car, like a Ferrari or one of those big, black shiny Aston Martins.

She's looking at him funny, like there's a Sudoku puzzle in his pupils or something.

"D'you... get what I'm saying?"

He shakes his head.

She frowns a little, light eyebrows furrowing slightly. "...Look at this way. You know how you feel about Bianca?"

Flummoxed, momentarily, followed by an immediate urge to hurl. "...I'm not in love with my sister."

She rolls her eyes. "No! That's not what I... no , that's not what I meant. But love is love, whether it's romantic or... for family. I was just going to say that... what you feel for your sister; that's love. You love her. You'd throw yourself off a cliff without a moment's thought for her. You'd take a bullet without any consideration for yourself for her. When she died... there was this void in your life that's never going to be able to be filled, even if everything turns out okay in the rest of your life... right?"

He nods. There's a tiny aching in his chest.

"That's loving someone. That's what it feels like." She tucks a curl of hair behind her ear. "And if you're honest with yourself... That's not how you feel about me." A half-smile. "Is it?"

He's not sure.

"And a boner in the girls' shower room isn't going to change that," she says softly, reaching for her belongings once more, and even though his face burns a familiar red he knows it's not meant as an attack, as a jibe.

Stil hurts, though.

She moves closer, and he's pretty sure he could count her tiny eyelashes. They're about the same height – maybe he's a tiny bit taller, but he can't really bring himself to give a fuck right now when she's that close to him, smelling fruity and soapy and good.

"Don't tell Percy," he mumbles.

She nods. "Okay."

And then she leans forward and presses a single kiss to his lips.

Her forehead is resting against his as he takes a deep breath, eyes closed. He can hear her _smile_. That's weird.

And he can hear her hesitate, like she's going to say something else, but she doesn't – and before he knows it, she's slipped away and he's opening his eyes to an empty shower room.

The silence is creepy.

He watches as a tiny spider crawls from the drain onto the tiles and across the width of the corridor.

"Fuck me," he mutters.

And he sort of wishes there'd been a damn monster in the shower room, after all.

* * *

_A/N ~ completed for Bookaholic711's writing challenge Project PULL. visit her profile for more information._


	5. refuge

_**Title: **Refuge_

_**Characters/pairing: **Luke/Calypso_

_**Warnings/spoilers**: Post-TLO; reference to sexual experience and some language_

**_Song choice: _**_Eternity - Robbie Williams_

_**Summary**: Thrown from the summit of Mt. Othrys, Luke Castellan is broken. She finds him in the waves._

_**A/N**: Set throughout BOTL, with reference to the events after Titan War in TLO. Based on a prompt from the ever-wonderful Mipie._

**_Dedication: _**_To those who gave their lives in the fight of their country. We will remember them.

* * *

_

He's broken.

{_And the broken souls of heroes always find their way to her, somehow._}

* * *

She doesn't dare to believe her eyes.

_So soon? _her heart whispers. _Never._

And yet she knows it does not do well to delude oneself. There is a boy, in the water. There can be no denying it.

Excitement and anxiety seem to light inside her, like a fiery match in the darkness.

_Who - ?_

The body floats precariously on the crest of the wave, unmoving. Blood-soaked and battered. From the beach metres away she cannot make out the features; she can see a glimmer of blonde hair darkened by the sea water lapping at his sides, but little else.

She starts towards the water, and wades into the tide.

* * *

He does stir as she drags him to her, clutching him tight.

_Rest, my hero. You've come to the right place._

"Help!" she cries to the shore. Moments pass and she feels them surround her, her invisible companions raising his body from the surface of the water and carrying him to the safety of the sand. She waits, watching in the midst of the blue.

* * *

He takes so long to heal. Longer than _the first one _and certainly longer than _the second_.

He is blonde, and older than _the second_. She doesn't know any more. He doesn't murmur in his sleep like _the second _used to. He is silent, still, unyielding.

She amuses herself with guessing his story. A brave hero, conquered in battle, seeks refuge in the ocean. A bravo hero, who bravely threw himself to the waves to escape near death. A brave hero, who was prepared to die for the friends he loved so dearly. The scar, etched crudely upon his handsome face, seems proof of it.

She doesn't imagine the truth.

* * *

One morning she arrives to tend to him, and he's sat up. Simply sat, blue eyes boring into the wall opposite. A beautiful blue.

"My hero," she murmurs. "I am relieved. I was beginning to think you wouldn't stir at all."

He doesn't so much as look at her.

"How are you feeling?" she asks, hastening to his bedside and sitting to closer inspect his wounds. "Better, I trust?"

She reaches for his neck to feel for the swelling of the spinal damage – _good, _she thinks, _he is healing - _and he flinches away, suddenly enraged.

"My apologies." She bows her head. "I was merely ensuring your injuries –"

"Where am I?" He cuts her short, angry eyes casting disparaging glances about the place. "Where is this place?"

The _place _is laden with bitter resentment. She narrows her eyes.

"Somewhere rudeness will not be tolerated," she says curtly. "Regardless of circumstances."

"And who the fuck are you?"

She does not know the meaning nor nature of this _fuck, _but she is fairly certain of its intended effect. "I am many things. I am Calypso, and I am your host," she says, and her anger is poorly concealed. "I have nursed you from near death. You would do well to show me a little courtesy; for you should know I am amply prepared to return you to the state from whence you came."

Her outburst seems to cause him to suddenly take an interest. Blue eyes zero in on her own, and she purses her lips.

"Then you can tell me," he says. His voice is lower, and quieter, and it sort of trembles around the edges. "Why am I here?"

"It is the will of the Fates," she says.

A slow nod.

"It's always the will of the Fates," he mutters darkly, and although she wonders what he means, she does not ask.

* * *

He isn't as obedient as _the second. _He wants to do everything, too fast, and does not take kindly to being told to sleep.

"But you need _rest_," she urges, and forces him down into the bed with all her might. "There is time yet for you to race about the place and what-not, but for now you need sleep. You shan't be fit for anything without respite."

"I don't need sleep," he grumbles.

"My hero, I must disagree."

He scowls. "Don't call me that. I'm not a hero."

She frowns as he clambers in amongst sheets, muttering curses under his breath. "Don't be foolish," she chastises. "You must be a hero. Only heroes can find their way to my island."

He barks out a sour laugh as she folds the blankets around him – he bats her hands away, shaking his head. "Stop it. I can put a comforter around me, for God's sake."

"For _the gods' _sake," she corrects, raising his pillows for him. She feels him tense under the layers of quilts.

"The gods," he mutters. "You like the gods?"

"Well enough."

"But you still have your doubts?" he asks, and strangely she now as his utmost attention, and he's stopped trying to push her away.

"Would you hold it against me?" she asks.

That seems to amuse him.

"Not in the slightest," he says.

* * *

They eat together, one evening, on the beach.

He eats quickly, and silently.

"You are different to your predecessor," she notes. "He had questions about everything. Questions about the garden, the island–"

"Percy."

She blinks. "Indeed. You know him?"

He doesn't answer. They exchange but a word for the rest of the evening.

* * *

He helps a little in her garden, but most afternoons she's alone.

He thinks, often. Always thinking. It seems there is no freedom from his stream of conscious, agonizing thought.

There is only one question he cares for. He asks it over and over. _Do you like the gods, Calypso? _

"I have already answered that question, my hero," she says, patiently. "What more can you want from me?"

He doesn't answer, and goes back his thoughts.

* * *

Until one evening, when she grows tired of the sombre glances and private mutterings, and confesses.

"The gods are my captors," she says. "They imprisoned me here."

"I know. For supporting your father." He takes a mouthful of chicken, oblivious to her obvious surprise. "Atlas."

She nods into her glass, somewhat impressed. "I should not have done it."

"Supported the Titans, you mean?" he says. She notices how his fingers clench tightly around his knife, how his mouth seems suddenly to tighten, and she wonders.

"No," she says, irked. "I should not have supported my father."

He looks at her, perhaps a little curious: "Why not?"

"Because I made the mistake of assuming that my family's allegiance was naturally the right one." She places down her knife and fork, folding her hands in her lap and letting her gaze wander out to see. "I thought that because my father supported them, so I should follow in his footsteps. I was young, and foolish. I lacked the courage to think for myself, to make my own decisions."

She is lost in her own hazy memory for a moment or two – she pictures fire and falling skies, the cries of children and the shudder of thunder underfoot - and when her mind returns to the dinner table she finds his gaze upon her, as if surveying her in a whole new light.

"I went against my father," he admits.

She raises her eyebrows. "Indeed?"

He nods, child-like for a moment.

"Then you are a braver soul than I." She lifts her fork once more, and delves back into her meal. "I envy you that, hero."

He leaves his meal, and his gaze does not stray from her once.

* * *

And in the middle of the night, he comes to her. She is reading to herself when she glances up, startled, to find him stood in her bed chamber, watching her closely. She blushes furiously, dragging her quilts around her to conceal her nightgown.

"I have a job to do," he says, and he seems anxious – nervous, even. "Back in... the normal world. And I don't know whether I should do it."

"Do you wish for me to advise you?"

"No." He moves a little closer towards the bed, sitting gingerly down at her side. She doesn't feel threatened. That surprises her. A stranger in her bedchamber is a rarity, and not one she would usually take lightly – but instead she is gripped with curiosity, and she surveys the boy in her bedroom with intrigue.

"Then why - ?"

And then his lips find hers, in the darkness. Tender and yearning, and brief. He withdraws quickly, and she feels his warm breath on her bottom lip.

"I need –"

"What do you need?" she whispers. Her hands slide to the sides of his face and she holds him, searching for blue eyes amongst the blackness of the night. The moonlight is spread in patches across the room. "What is it, my hero? What is it you need?"

"I –" He chokes, and bows his head. "I just need – someone –"

She drags him to her, his muscular mighty frame moving slowly and carefully over her own, and he comes, willingly, into the bed of Calypso by moonlight – wordlessly, silently, unquestioningly.

* * *

He slips away in the early morning, and when she goes to search for him, hours later, he's gone.

She cannot help but wonder.

_Did she even ask his name?_

* * *

She enquires after him, upon her release, as she sits outside the throne room of the Olympians with an old friend.

She thanks _the second _for her freedom. He blushes and says it's nothing, really, and she smiles. She's missed him.

"Percy..." she says tentatively. He glances up. "I have been meaning to ask. There was... a boy. After you. He came to my island."

"Hmm?"

"...I never asked his name. He was blonde. And there was a – a scar -"

"Luke?" He sounds surprised. "Luke came to your island?"

She nods.

_The second _seems to wrestle with the words for a moment, before saying, a little bluntly: "He was a hero."

She smiles. She thought as much.

* * *

He was broken.

_{But the broken souls of heroes always found their way to her, somehow}_

* * *

_A/N ~ completed for Bookaholic711's writing challenge Project PULL. visit her profile for more information._


	6. to fall or fly

**_Title: _**_To Fall Or Fly_

**_Characters/pairing: _**_General_

**_Warning/spoilers: _**_General_

**_Song choice: _**_Welcome Home, Son - Radical Face_

**A/N: **_Based on a untitled poem by Simon Armitage - this is one of my favourite poems, and it seemed only right that I should, therefore, find inspiration in it. The poem is about the son's relationship with his mother as he grows into adulthood, as he is consumed by this lingering feeling of self-doubt and reliance on the woman who has loved him from the start - and perhaps a little of her own dependency, too. The story follows three central male characters and their mothers, as they grow up in the world. _

_**Summary: **mother, any distance greater than a single span requires a second pair of hands._

_**Dedication**: to the friends I'm proud to surround myself with. I love you guys more than I could say. _

* * *

_mother, any distance greater than a single span_

_requires a second pair of hands._

_you come to help me measure windows, pelmets, doors,_

_the acres of the walls, the prairies of the floors._

* * *

**four. **

"_Mio figlio_..."

He squirms away, dark eyes gazing longingly out of the window to the sun-drenched piazza outside: "But _mamma_..."

She reaches for him, pulling his small frame to her as a smile plays on her lips. He wriggles and shifts awkwardly from foot to foot as she straightens his collar, smoothes his hair, tucks his shirt neatly into the waist band of his trousers. "It would not do for my _ragazzo _to go to mass looking like he has come from the fields of the _Pianura Padana_."

"I don't want to go to mass," he grumbles, and his face furrows into a scowl. "Nothing fun ever happens."

She sighs. His eyes, as ever, dart back to the open window, and she feels a strange flighty feeling ring around the walls of her heart, a strange sense of grief and longing and the sensation that there is no _time. _

"Perhaps..." Her finger traces the soft curve of his cheek. "Perhaps we can miss mass, just this once."

He looks up, disbelief and elation etched upon his delicate features. "No mass?"

"Not today."

His tiny arms wind their way around her middle and he squeezes tightly as she laughs – she has but a moment to press a shaky kiss to his hairline, before he is out in the sunlight with the sound of his shoes clattering on the cobbles outside.

* * *

"Percy, _please – _please, don't, just put down the –"

He tears page after page from the binding with clenched fists and throws the book across the room with a fiery venom – it hits a painting, and both clatter loudly to the floor. The sound of smashing glass rings in her ears like a siren.

"- Percy, listen to me – getting angry isn't going to solve anything – just count to ten; come on, count with me – one – two – three –"

He moves to the bookshelves and drags a fist across the top, scattering books across the room and each landing with a heavy thud upon the carpet.

"- Percy, _please _calm down – sweetie, come on, it's not that bad, you just have to calm down!–"

He throws himself down on the sofa, his bottom lip quivering, and there's silence. It's over. She knows it's over.

"It's too _hard,_" he whispers. Tears glisten in his green, green eyes.

She goes to him, feeling her son's tiny frame shuddering with tears against her chest, trying not to see the broken glass, the paper shreds, the smashed vase, the upturned armchair leant against the flaking wallpaper.

He sniffs into her sweater.

"It's okay," she whispers. "It's okay. It's going to be just fine, you'll see."

She wishes at least one of them would believe it.

* * *

The police officer looks a little bemused as he drops off the small toddler on her doorstep, muttering something about stealing candy and _too young to know what he's doing _and _needs a stronger hand_.

She doesn't listen. She sees her boy and embraces him, tightly, and bustles through to the kitchen as he slouches in beside her, sitting slumped at the table as she struggles to tie her apron around her midriff.

"Let's say no more of it," she says cheerily. He nods. He hasn't met her eye in a while, she notices, and she wonders why, but the thought has vanished within moments. "Now – what shall we have as a snack? We have some lemonade – would you like some lemonade, Mr Grumpy?"

He shakes his head. "Kool-Aid," he mumbles.

She puts her hands on her hips. "Now, that just won't do! Kool-Aid _what _now?"

"Kool-Aid... please."

She obliges, proffering first the drink, before placing a plate laden with peanut butter sandwiches in front of him, followed by a side plate with a golden cookie placed ceremoniously dead centre. "There! How's that?"

"Thanks mom," he says quietly, and he smiles into a bite of sandwich.

She turns, humming to herself. "Kool-Aid and peanut butter sandwiches. And a cookie! Your old mother's too good to you, your silly old mom –"

- everything goes black.

_His fate – murderer and traitor, my son! – my boy! - _

(She blinks and light floods her vision again. She thinks nothing of it, nothing at all – but the clock must be broken, because it's suddenly three minutes fast, and strangely enough when she turns away from the sink her son has vanished and there's an empty glass and platter on the kitchen table where Luke ought to be).

* * *

_you at the zero-end, me with the spool of tape, recording_

_length, reporting metres, centimetres back to base, then leaving_

_up the stairs, the line still feeding out, unreeling_

_years between us. anchor. kite._

* * *

**eleven. **

Eternal peace in the land of the deceased is a pleasant enough existence, if a little tedious, she discovers.

She spies her circling overhead and calls out: "Alecto!"

The Fury grumbles as she approaches, landing a few feet away and surveying her with contempt.

"Out with it," she says grumpily, and her shrivelled face assumes an even more horrible expression as she scowls at the various souls which turn to watch the creature stood amongst them with a vacant curiosity.

"How is he?" she asks, hesitantly.

The Fury sighs, giving an irritable flick of her wings. "He is well enough. He asks of you, often."

She sighs, her hands tracing the patterns in the black lace of her gown without need for direction – years have passed, and she could draw the intricate stitching with her eyes closed and one hand tied behind her back. "And what else?"

"The boy walks a troubled path." Her forked tongue flickers between her teeth. "His father fears for his fate. He says too much has come upon him at once, and now he worries for the choices he is to make."

She nods. "_Grazie_."

The Fury hisses at the soul of elderly man nearby, before launching for the sky, wings arched behind her.

She thinks of him, and only of him.

* * *

_Come home come home come home come home_

Of course he'll choose his mother. Of course. What does a summer camp have that she doesn't have?

_No school, no life as an outsider, no drunken stepfather, no bills to pay, no evil teachers, no bullies, no late-night shifts, no homework, no tiny shitty apartment, no broken elevator, no academic record, no detention – _

She takes a deep breath, trying to steady herself on the balcony railing. _Stop it, Sally. You'll only make it worse. He'll be home for the school year. He won't stay there year-round. Don't worry. It's going to be fine._

She worries at her lip.

_please please please come home come home come home _

* * *

He's coming up the path – she can see him, that's him, she knows it! Her boy, that's her boy, she can see –

"Here's your mail, Ms Castellan."

His hand is reaching out towards her, clasping a pile of letters, and all she sees his him – beautiful blue eyes and blonde hair and his father's looks; yes, that's Hermes' son, alright –

"Ms Castellan?" He shakes the mail at her. "Here. Come on, I gotta do this whole block before eleven or my boss is going to kill me."

Kill –

_- killer, my boy is no killer – Hermes, you must – seek the Fates and make them see – protect him, Hermes, not his fate – no! _

Mail on the path and a gate swinging shut, and an empty garden (maybe he will come back tomorrow, and drink the Kool-Aid and the peanut butter and the cookies and play in the grass with his cars once again.)

Her boy is coming. He needs his mother, and soon he'll come and see her again, and they'll sit in the sunshine. That's how it'll go. Of course.

She smiles.

* * *

_i space-walk through the empty bedrooms, climb_

_the ladder to the loft, to breaking point, where something_

_has to give._

* * *

**seventeen.**

_Let me see him, _she asks. _Just once. Just a glance, il mio amore. _

He obliges, reluctantly, unwittingly, abashedly.

She watches him, from a distance – watching as he walks through the Underworld with unassumingly, placidly, moving closer and closer to her without realization. It is as if her eyes were made to _see _him, to lose themselves in his perfection, and if they were never to see again it would be no shame, no shame at all.

_He is so beautiful_, she thinks. She turns to the Lord of the Dead, who studies his son with still pride.

"Does he still ask of me?" she asks, and fears the tremble in her voice.

He nods. "Every day."

She is consumed by a rush of affection, a rush of regret, as she watches her son, and she cannot bear to look any longer.

_I was there through it all, mio figlio. You could not see me. But there I was. _

Does he hear?

He stops, suddenly, and blinks, looking about the place as if searching for the source of something. She presses a smile to her fingertips.

* * *

"Moooooom..."

She grins. "I know that _mooooom, _Perseus Jackson, and I know it doesn't end well."

"It's just... you know when I said I knew what to do if the clothes washer started making that weird grinding sound..."

She smiles at a customer, holding out a bulging bag of candy for them and waving a cheery goodbye as they amble way. "...yes, dear."

"Well, I kind of...didn't _really _know what to do so I pressed some buttons and now there's kind of foam spewing out everywhere..." There's an ominous banging sound, followed by a dull _whoosh _and a clanging of something that sounds like pots in the background. "Oh, shit..."

"Language, young man," she scolds, trying to keep her cell tucked neatly into the crook of her shoulder as she undoes her apron with one hand and brush sugar from the counter with the other. "So what you're really saying is _mom please come help with the clothes washer please come home from work and help me_, hmm?"

"...um, sorta."

She rolls her eyes. "I'll be there in five. Just try not to... ingest anything that comes out of the clothes washer."

"...Y'know, I don't tell you enough exactly how much I love you."

He laughs. Something inside her seems to glow warmly, like a flickering campfire's warmth on the coldest of winter's nights.

* * *

He's coming home. Today. It'll be today. She knows it. She can feel it.

(and darkness... but - )

_- fate – resolved – a hero, a hero, my boy – sacrifice – Isles of the Blessed – redemption and freedom and hope – my boy – _

Her eyes flutter open once more.

Only this time, she remembers. She smiles.

* * *

_two floors below your fingertips still pinch_

_the last one-hundredth of an inch...i reach_

_towards a hatch that opens on an endless sky_

_to fall or fly._

* * *

_A/N ~ completed for Bookaholic711's writing challenge Project PULL. visit her profile for more information._


	7. a box and a flashlight

**_Title: _**_A Box and a Flashlight_

**_Characters/pairing: _**_Rachel/Nico_

**_Warning/spoilers: _**_Post-TLO with mild language and reference to sexual experience_

**_A/N: _**_Challenged by Kioko to write a Rachel/Nico fic following my wish to be challenged into writing for a non-canon pairing... Going to be honest and say I struggled with this one. Definitely a tricky one to write, because I didn't have the safety net of a canon ship to fall back on, and I know there's a lot of shippers for R/N. If this is truly terrible, please direct all complaints in her direction._

**_Song choice: _**_Turn Me On - Norah Jones_

_**Summary: **In the darkness, he comes searching for the light._

_**Dedication**: For the girl across the road whose world has just been turned upside down. My heart goes out to you, wholly and sincerely._

* * *

_like a _**flower**_ waiting to _bloom

_~like a lightbulb in a **dark**_ _room~_

_i'm just sitting here _{waiting}_ for **you **_

_~to come home and~_

{turn **me **on}

* * *

It's the most ridiculous, ludicrous, _preposterous _thing.

(Of course, this only occurs to her the morning after).

* * *

He's seventeen, she's twenty-two. Again, an afterthought.

They see each other once, maybe twice a month, and only ever amongst friends; at Annabeth and Percy's; at the bar where she works in the evenings during the routine demigod gatherings; and, of course, at Camp in the summer months, though she frequents the camp less and less as the demands of her art course increase with alarming intensity. Their conversations – few and far between – are a little awkward, a little hesitant. She likes him, of course, immensely, and regularly wonders if she ought to know him a little better - but there's always too many _people_, too much _noise, _and though she scarcely bears to admit it there's something a little frightening about the son of Death wrapped in darkness sat quietly in the corner.

And then Percy will say something reasonably ridiculous and Annabeth'll roll her eyes and say he's _such a Seaweed Brain _and she'll watch him smiling wryly at the pair.

He's not half as scary when he's smiling, she thinks.

* * *

It _is _a little scary, however, at something-to-ten in the evening, when she's alone in her studio flat (curled up in bed and trying to read a chapter on renaissance sculpture) on a Tuesday evening and she's suddenly plunged into darkness.

_Blackout, _she thinks, and wishes her Oracle powers extended to irregularities with her neighbourhood's power-supply and wasn't just limited to apocalyptic doomsday poetry as she pushes back the blankets and fumbles gracelessly for the flashlight she's sure is lurking around here _somewhere_, cursing as she trips over various artist's materials littered about the floor.

A few minutes later a loud hammering sounds at the door, just as her fingertips finally locate the –

"_Shit_!"

She grasps the flashlight in her left hand, illuminating her bare foot now dripping with crimson paint from the unopened pot she's trodden in just moments before.

_Bang bang bang bang bang – _

"I'm coming, I'm coming!" she exclaims crossly, trying to wipe the best of the paint onto a nearby sweater (_never liked it much anyway, _she thinks) as she hops precariously towards the door with a flashlight in one hand and the now paint-stained knitwear in the other, red paint soaking her leggings and splashing down upon the floorboards.

_Bang bang – _

She balances the sweater in the crook of her elbow and with one paint-stained hand manages to wrench open the door and find Nico di Angelo, rain-drenched and shivering, stood out in the darkness.

* * *

Naturally, she decides to vent her frustration upon the boy in the corridor.

"What's with the banging, di Angelo?" she demands, and casts the sweater to the floor, raising the flashlight to peer curiously at the son of Hades. "You know, it's _customary _for normal people to knock once–"

He has the decency to look sheepish.

"I was walking back from the restaurant when the streetlights went out." His hands are tucked meekly in his pockets, rocking backwards and forwards on his heels. "And I was right outside your building and I kind of needed a flashlight to get home, but I wasn't sure if -" He does a double-take at the sight of her reddened toes. "Fuck, Dare, what happened to your foot?"

"It's nothing – it's - paint -" she says dismissively, dragging her foot hurriedly over the floor, "Oh, gods –"

He watches, eyebrows furrowed.

"Look, are you coming in or not?" She glances up expectantly. He looks slightly flummoxed.

"Oh – yeah, sorry –"

He scoots in around her –

"Here," he says, a little gruffly, "let me –"

- and takes the flashlight as it starts to slip from her hand. She finishes dabbing at her foot with the sweater, and places it gingerly down on the floorboards as he gets the door.

"Thanks," she grumbles, "you didn't have to –"

"Oh, _shit._"

She turns, peering curiously, to see the light of the flashlight fall upon Nico's sneaker, now dripping with mysterious lime green liquid next to a large tray of acrylic paint. His dark hair falls into his eyes as he glances up at her, a little pathetically.

She smirks.

* * *

They put the sneakers on the radiator ("Why is everything in your apartment covered in paint?") and his ruined sock in the trash can – she finds some old candles in a drawer in her bedroom and positions them strategically around the apartment, and soon the apartment is lit with a warm glow, miniature flames reflected in the rain-soaked windows as the weather rages outside.

He sort of stands awkwardly by the door as she hops around the apartment with matches and paint-drenched hosiery.

"Sit down, di Angelo, and lose the hoodie."

He blinks at her, looking slightly startled: "What?"

She gestures to his clothing, rain-soaked and wrinkling. "You'll get damp if you leave it on. Hand it over, I'll put it in the radiator with your sneakers."

He obliges, reluctantly peeling the wet material from his forearms, revealing a plain black t-shirt underneath, and hands her the offending garment. She catches herself looking and coughs once, before hastily wandering through to the kitchen area, calling over the shoulder for him to _sit down _or –

"- at least make yourself useful. I've got a bunch of flyers for an Amnesty International protest next week that need stapling."

* * *

She returns to find a pile of neatly stacked, freshly stapled campaign leaflets on her coffee table.

"Wow." She inspects the pile, bemused. "I was kind of joking."

He shrugs. "I don't mind."

She gets him to do fifty more.

* * *

And then they kind of sit in awkward silence on the couch, watching the candles flickering merrily away amongst the darkness and the pounding of the rain outside.

"So..." She drums her fingers absently along the fading patterns of her legs. "Your hoodie'll should be dry pretty soon."

"Thanks."

A pause.

"You don't have a TV," he remarks, a little suddenly.

"Nope. Don't like TV that much." She wrinkles her nose in distaste. "Blatant commercialism and the draining of true artistic talent for the sake of reality TV shows that cut the cultural heart of our nation and drink its still warm blood."

A longer pause.

"...plus I kind of can't afford my TV bill."

"Oh." She watches his dark eyes flicker to the dusty unplugged TV set in the corner of the room. "But isn't your family super rich?"

She stiffens.

"I'd rather not live life on my father's coat-tails," she mutters, and suddenly even the warmth of the candles can't quite break the icy silence that falls between them.

She looks at the wall, hoping he looks suitably ashamed of himself.

"I admire you for that, y'know," he says.

She blushes and thanks the gods for the poor visibility in the dim light.

* * *

She drags through her renaissance book and delves back into her chapter. He stands, wandering slowly around her apartment with dark eyes studying every inch, every millimetre in minute detail.

"You're really good at art," he mutters abashedly, gesturing vaguely in the direction of a vast array of sketches adorning the kitchen wall.

"...Thanks."

"Is that –" He squints at one of the canvas paintings, tilting his head to the side for a closer examination. "Is that Percy and Annabeth?"

She shifts the book to the side and goes to join him. "Oh, yeah. It's going to be their Christmas present. That's if I ever get round to finishing it. It didn't turn out like I'd hoped ... It's not quite what I wanted."

"I think it's really –" He stops. "Wait, is that me?"

"What?"

He reaches for a small paper drawing on a piece of torn-out sketch-pad paper, sticking out from behind the painted canvas – it's an old picture from a good five, six years ago, with Nico in his aviator jacket and a curiously dark expression etched upon his youthful features. A knot seems to form in her stomach as he prises it gingerly away from its resting place.

She feels she should probably say something, but doesn't. His hand kind of traces the edge of the paper as he stares intently down into it, and he's so still, so silent, that if she closes her eyes she imagines she could pretend he wasn't even there.

He sort of smiles, before replacing the picture and rising once more. "Those are really – you're really –"

She glances up at him, watching as his lips try to form words which she hopes are complimentary, and smiles to herself, folding her arms over her chest.

"...What?" he asks. "What're you smiling at?"

"You."

"Thanks," he mutters, but she catches sight of his lips quirking upwards in a smile.

"Can barely believe you're the same person, y'know." She nudges the drawing with her bare foot. "You look so different."

"Well," he says, sounding a little _well, duh_. "I'm not a little kid anymore."

She frowns at him. He overtook her in height months ago; she observes the sharper shape to his jaw, his cheekbones, - something she hadn't noticed before. There was something more adult in the way he holds himself – his posture seems less slumped, less introverted, maybe. The light of the candle casts shadows across his darkened complexion.

"No," she says, and sort of surprises herself. "You're not."

* * *

She offers him some soda and they sit in the kitchen, one candle between them. She shows him how to run his fingertips through the flame without getting burnt, and he toys with the fire with his thumb and forefinger as she helps herself to a bag of potato chips.

"Y'know, I've never been in a blackout before," he muses. She gapes at him.

"Never _ever_?"

He shakes his head glumly.

"...That's crazy," she decides. He shrugs again.

"So what do people... _do _in a blackout, exactly?"

She thinks about it. "Read by candlelight? Play games, play music... if you can play an instrument, I mean..." She pauses. "Actually, you want to know something interesting?"

"...Is this going to be like Annabeth-interesting or actually interesting?"

She grins. "I won't tell her you said that."

"She'd eat me," he mumbles, and she laughs, her laughter gently shaking the flickering flame.

"They say that nine months after every major blackout, there's a sudden baby-boom with a bunch of kids being born all at once."

He looks suitably bewildered. "What, people hook-up during black-outs?"

"Apparently so," she says. "'Darling, whatever shall we do? We can't watch TV? Quickly! To the bedroom!'"

She laughs at her own joke. He studies her carefully as she delves into the bottom of the potato chip packet, and feels her face burn under his stare.

* * *

The rain thunders on and she's loathe to send him out in it.

"And if you died from hypothermia or got stabbed in some dark alleyway something, di Angelo, I'd never forgive myself." She yawns. "And if the worst comes to the worst, you're on the couch and I'll drop you off at college in the morning."

"School."

"What?"

"...I'm not at college?"

"Oh, right." She blushes. "Sorry."

He doesn't seem all that bothered.

* * *

And somehow, with the candles and the darkness and the strange cosy warmth that hangs welcomed in the air, she finds herself unwinding; whether it's just her increasing exhaustion or unwillingness to allow awkward silence to reign once more, she's not sure – she just finds herself relaxing around him, and soon finds his presence a small comfort, another candle against the dark tremors of the night.

"Hoodie," she says, dragging it from the radiator and throwing it to him; he catches it nimbly, heaving it quickly over his head. She watches, looking disapprovingly at his choice of attire.

"...Why are you staring at me?" he asks, slightly affronted.

"Why do you wear black all the time?"

He shrugs. "Habit, I guess."

"So it's not like a son of Hades dress code, or something?"

He half-smiles. She reaches for a green scarf on her dresser and approaches steadily, grinning as she reaches to wrap it around his neck – his expression is one of revulsion, but he relents and allows her to tie it loosely under his chin.

"There. Much better."

"...Really?" He glances down at the scarf as she adjusts the knot, her face furrowed in concentration. "You think my look works better with a girls' scarf."

She grins. "Sure. Got to get out of your box sometimes."

"You ever get out of your box, Dare?"

She wanders back over the dresser and rummages around in the open drawer for more scarves – she finds a pink one, a yellow, a strange black and white variety with a kooky geometric print. "What's that supposed to mean?"

A pause. "Nothing."

She drapes more of the scarves over his shoulders – he looks resigned, slightly amused by the concentration etched upon her face as she rearranges the garments in some sort of elegant position across his frame. An old beret lies on a pile of laundry in the corner, along with a tattered feather boa stolen from her school's costume department – she duly adds the pieces to the ensemble and steps back to admire her handy work. "Wow. Looking good, di Angelo."

He pulls a face.

"Now if you wait there –"

"- wait, what are you –" She snatches at her Polaroid and tries to aim it in his direction as he protests, trying cover the lens of the camera as she darts from left to right, trying to get a clear shot of him, "- no, no photos, don't –"

She swats his hand out of the way: "Hey, take it like a man!"

"No, if Percy – c'mon, Dare, cut it out! –"

"A-ha!" She snaps the shot and grins widely in victory; he rolls his eyes as he slumps in defeat. "Gotcha."

"Fine," he says. "Your turn."

He carefully removes the hat, flattening his ruffled hair, and lowers it onto her head slowly, choosing the perfect angle as she looks on from under the brim. Disentangling himself from under the layers of scarves takes a good thirty seconds before he's able raise the collection over his head and neck – he steps towards her, lying them gently across her shoulders. His eyes blink intently down at his creation, seemingly pleased.

"Suits you," he says.

It's her turn to look mock-disgruntled. "I'm sure."

* * *

His hands trace the length of one scarf absently, and all she can hear is the dull flickering of the candle flame.

"Nico," she says.

His eyes sort of fall onto hers. She unwinds a scarf from around her neck and wraps it once around his.

And she sort of raises herself up on her tiptoes, hands clasped to the ends of the scarf, and kisses him, once, without thinking or feeling or knowing.

* * *

She breaks the kiss. In the dim light, she can just about make-out his expression. He looks flummoxed.

"Did you –?"

"Sorry," she mutters. Her gaze drops to the floorboards. "Trick of the light."

Her hands are still grasping the scarf.

"But you –" He's struggling. "But you can't –"

It's true, but she chooses to forget, amongst the darkness and the flames and the watery fingers tapping at her bedroom window.

* * *

"Time to get out of my box," she whispers.

And the rest is darkness.

* * *

She remembers, in the morning, when sunlight is streaming through the gap in the curtains and she's stiff and kind of aching and doesn't feel like she's slept much at all - and she turns to her right to see a boy (a _man_) curled up in bed beside her.

She remembers the warmth of his fingertips and the rush of emotions she hasn't felt in _years _and the fumbling in the blackness, the yearning for the boy pressed to her.

He looks different in the daylight. He looks like _Nico. _

She drags the quilts around her, feeling a thousand trillion gazillion things at once, only she's not sure exactly _what _she's feeling as she scans the room to see various items of clothing scattered about the place; a pile of scarves and an old beret on top of a pile of Amnesty International leaflets and a heap of black clothing and leggings and a hoodie and a green-stained pair of Converse.

* * *

The phone rings.

It's Percy.

"You seen Nico?"

She glances back at the boy with his forearm cast haphazardly over his eyes, sound asleep despite the brightness of the morning sunshine.

"...Why would I have seen him?"

"I don't know. Annabeth's getting to me call everyone." He sighs. "She's freaking out, doing her mother-hen act because he didn't make it back last night and she's worried he's cut up in some gangster's trunk or something."

She runs a hand through her hair. "I don't know, Percy..."

A shake of her head and a pause.

"...hey, are you okay?"

* * *

Everything seems clearer in the morning light.

"Y'know," she says softly, "he's not a child anymore."

* * *

She hangs up just as he starts to stir, dark eyelashes fluttering calmly awake.

* * *

It's the most ridiculous, ludicrous, _preposterous _thing, what they did that night in the dark in the candlelight.

(And she doesn't regret it. Not one bit).

* * *

_A/N ~ completed for Bookaholic711's writing challenge Project PULL. visit her profile for more information._


	8. when the weather got cold

**_Title: _**_When The Weather Got Cold_

**_Characters/pairing: _**_Will Solace/Rachel Elizabeth Dare; references to Will Solace/Katie Gardner_

**_Warning/spoilers: _**_General series spoilers. Some language and reference to sexual experience._

**_Song choice: _**_Winter Song - Ingrid Michaelson and Sara Bareilles _

_**Summary: **Because that is the winter of __him - _and only _him**. **_

**_A/N: _**_This may seem a little peculiar to you, but let me explain. Once upon a time, a strange bean called **Kioko **invented the pairing of Will Solace and Katie Gardner. A little after that, she then created a second pairing, perhaps a little odder - that of Rachel Elizabeth Dare and the afore mentioned Mr Solace, as a meeting of creative artistic souls in fluffy heaven. I fell a little in love with both pairings and with Will, creating for him this wonderfully woefully weird personality; and so fell in love with both ships. This meeting of minds between Will and Rachel became much darker in my mind and perhaps a little angst-ridden, and so this experimental fic, inspired by the simple prompt 'when the weather got cold', was spawned. It's odd, I'll warn you, but I hope you enjoy it - it's wintery and weird, as all holiday-time fics should be (...mmm.) Do let me know what you think. And a Very Merry Christmas to all._

_**Dedication**: To Kioko, who is (forgive my language) a motherfucking ship-creating genius. _

* * *

'Happiness can be found in even the darkest of places - if one only remembers to turn on the light."

* * *

_How cold?_

_Very cold, you assure him. It's very very cold._

_He half-laughs at you down the phone, though you don't find any of it remotely funny; not the fact that you have to sit in one, two, three, four, five, __**six **__different layers of clothing __**inside**__ the apartment, because the heating is broken and the windows are as thin as the ice you slipped in on the sidewalk this morning, and however much you try to light candles and use the flames to warm your quivering hands all you can think is how much you hate fire and so put it out just as quickly as you light the fucking match._

_Fire burns your favourite things. Paintings and sketches and books and libraries and museums and wallpaper and forests. You hate fire, always have. _

* * *

Years later, you'll remember that winter. Not just for the _**fucking cold **__(_you scream at the weather forecast daily; how can it be so cold? How?) – but because that is the winter of _him _and only _him. _

Most people have summer romances, whirlwind summer romances – but not you, no. You have a snowstorm winter romance, which lasts a season but _lasts _a lifetime.

And if anything, the only thing you learn from it all is exactly _what_ Roberta Flack was singing about in that dreadful song you hate so much.

And also that an artist plus another artist equals a total fucking _disaster. _

* * *

He is perfect, and he is not. That's what you love about him; what you still _love _about him (and most likely what **she **loves about him, too).

* * *

**September**. You meet him in the morning, and you've fallen hopelessly in love with him by the afternoon, and by the following evening you've shared his bed and kissed his temple and felt his hand soft as a whisper in the night.

He never calls you _Rachel_. _Red, _he calls you, for the hair and for the initials in your silly name, and you say you don't mind, not one bit.

_Red. _It defines you. You hate that.

He's just Will, though. Just Will. Beautiful, beautiful, _beautiful _Will, who needs telling when to stop a sentence and has to constantly remind everyone that, no, he's _not gay_, he just really really likes musical theatre, interpretative dance, Audrey Hepburn movies and the _Princess Diaries. _

And even though the reason you notice him in the first place is perhaps a little fickle – _hello, Mr Abs – _the reason you _love_ him is much deeper than that. He's an artist. A musician and a romantic and a songwriter and an actor and a poet and by the time he's told you all this you're practically stood by your bed with your pants around your ankles because _oh my gods, should a person be so faultless?_

He's also intensely insecure. He's just got out of a super-serious relationship with some girl from Camp, which is _awesome. _Low self-esteem and self-doubt and a deep, unwavering passion and this constant quest for inspiration; and [even better] he's got _mommy _issues – a heroin addict in a run-down area in the scary end of Chicago – and anyone who knows you will tell you that if there's one thing you love more than a fellow artist, it's a fellow artist with some sort of psychological trauma because that is really, _really _hot.

You tell Percy this one night following one of Annabeth's culinary disasters during a failed attempt at a dinner party.

He winces and leaves you a note on the refrigerator door the next day.

BE CAREFUL, it reads.

You don't listen.

* * *

And he's everything you need. At that point in your life, he's everything you're looking for. Even his name. _Solace. _That's what he is to be to you, you know it.

Your twenties, they say, are for your vices, your addictions. Drugs and sex and parties and drink and too much, too fast.

_He_ is your addiction, without a shadow of doubt. And that doesn't scare you as much as it should.

* * *

**October**. It's all too fast, but you don't notice.

Within three days he's calling you at midnight, at four in the morning and again at five. He writes songs for you, you paint for him, and it's like that movie, _Shakespeare in Love_, like you've suddenly found your muse at long last. You spend every waking _moment _with each other, talking and talking and talking and _talking_ about the future and the world and yourselves – and making love, over and over, in ways only those in their crazy twenties _can_.

He listens to you. Like, actually _listens _to you.

You find that deeply unsettling.

* * *

_If it's cold, he asks, why don't you turn the radiator on? _

_It's broken, you remind him._

_Oh, yeah, he says. Fuck._

* * *

He's not your boyfriend. He's your _lover_, even though the word makes it sound so old and disgusting and terribly terribly twee.

You didn't believe in soulmates, but, by the _gods_, you do now.

[and you choose to believe he does, too.]

* * *

**November**. He leaves Camp for you. And you find a place, a tiny shitty little one-room apartment you fall in love with almost as fast as you fell for _him _and you move in together. It's been two months. Two _months. _

You have a mattress, and a stove, and an easel and a guitar and a sink and a bathtub and a fireplace that laughs _o-ho-ho-ho, you'd think I'd make this place warm but I won't o-ho-ho. _

They all say you're crazy. You agree.

* * *

He loves you. You know it. He tells you, over and over, and it's about the only thing you're sure of.

You love him. Perhaps a little more.

You fight with Annabeth, with Percy, with _everyone_ about it all. They're wrong, you decide. This is the way you want to live your life, and you've never been more sure of anything in your life.

They shake their heads, and they tell you that _Rachel, you've changed._

You agree.

* * *

Write me a poem, Will, you ask.

He does.

It's a moment of heaven to hear him read it to you, a moment of pure oblivion amongst the pains and the woes and the grim pragmatism of reality.

[but isn't that what it all is, really?]

* * *

_Maybe you could call the super, he suggests. You sigh._

_Can't, because the super's ill and they have no replacement because the apartment block is an underfunded shithole - and as you say this, there's a banging noise and a cupboard, their only cupboard, drops from the wall and falls with a deafening blow to the bare floorboards, and you hear the sound of smashing china. _

_Double fuck, he says. _

* * *

No money. A musician's salary and the commission charge for a fresh-out-of-college art student equates to _zero dollars._

You manage.

* * *

**December**. He fumbles with your buttons and your bra clasp and _you, _but he makes you feel like there is nothing more, nothing more to life at all. He teaches you ways of loving someone you've only ever heard of in _Wuthering Heights _or your favourite Eminem songs and everything he does is golden in your eyes.

It's all in the moment. That moment of climax, that moment of sheer bliss, where his eyes shine with your name on his lips and then you fall to earth with a bump as it ends, his fingertips falling to rest at your aching, quivering figure.

And how he makes you laugh. Endlessly. Accidentally, of course, because he's such a fool sometimes and it makes you want to laugh until you cry – and you do, regularly.

He only smiles.

* * *

But you fight.

And oh, how you fight.

It's burning raging _furious angry_ _**passionate fiery**_ rage; you scream at him, he screams back, and you throw things and he ducks. He just makes you _feel _so much, so so much, that sometimes the lines between sheer hatred and infinite love in its entirety become blurred to the point of despair.

You wake, you shout, you cry, you love. You kiss, you sigh, you fight again. And sleep.

You wake once more. It starts again.

And there's no-one else. This endless, constant dependency on one another, a sheer _need_ for one another forces you to cut off from the rest of the world and live in this dream-like state in this untouchable haven. You force reality out, for once in your life. And you live in fantasy.

You wonder when this became your life, this world that exists only to you.

* * *

He carries a picture with him. A photo.

You ask: Who is she?

Katie, he replies. Her name is Katie.

And this is the beginning of the end. Your end.

* * *

_You regard the broken remnants of the cupboard from the safety and confines of the mattress. _

_What do we do? His question is so simple. It says so much._

_I don't know, you admit. _

_Reality seeps in, like the damp dripping slowly in through the ceiling. _

* * *

You learn who she is. Katie Gardner. Her mother is Demeter and she's _that girl_ from his past; the one he still writes love songs about, the one he still murmurs the name of in his sleep, the one he thinks of when he closes his eyes and makes love to you on the old mattress in the dark and cold with the sound of the traffic spilling through the broken window.

January, full of rain and bitter bitter cold, and he's drained. An empty vessel sleeps beside her in their tiny shitty Brooklyn apartment. He is but a walking ghost. That's what he's become.

You hate her. You **hate **her.

You hate yourself a little bit, too.

* * *

_Red, he whispers. What are we doing?_

_You tremble. _

_What do you mean?_

_The phone-line crackles. _

_I – _

* * *

You're fighting more, and you know why; you're fighting to keep this afloat, to keep the dream going just a little longer; it's as if your mother is drumming on your bedroom door, calling for you to wake and you're trying to hold on, just for a moment longer. You don't even know why anymore.

But, as spring begins to crawl in, bright and hesitant like the sunshine beneath the gap under the door, you know it's over. He does, too. You barely speak. He doesn't touch you like he used to, look upon you like he used to.

It's as if a lifetime has passed in a single winter, and you feel older, weaker, _wiser. _

* * *

_I'm sorry, he says, and [to his credit] he sounds it. I just can't do this anymore. It's not fair to you. _

_It's never fair to me, you think, but you stay silent and listen to the sound of the rain._

* * *

And he stands before you, in the doorframe to that tiny shitty Brooklyn apartment, telling you _he's sorry _and _he will never ever ever forget this _and _you _as long as he lives – that you've taught him so much and he can _never quite thank you enough._

_You were the lesson I had to learn, _he says. And you nod, not quite sure what's meant by that, but you feel like you agree anyway.

A stale kiss upon your cheek for the boy you gave your heart to, wholly and unconditionally, and he's gone.

You curl up and cry and think peculiar thoughts about love and death and the many, _many _mistakes you've made.

* * *

You weren't thinking, that night. Your mind was elsewhere.

You just remember the match and the rug and the paper and the mattress and the flames, oh, the _flames_, and running down those stairs with the billowing black smoke catching in your throat as it _burns burns burns._

It ends in flames. That's how you will always remember it. Everything crumbles in the flames; your house, your world, the _life_ you made for yourself there, in that tiny shitty Brooklyn apartment.

[but was it _life_ at all? is that what it was? you're not sure. you're not really sure of anything anymore.]

* * *

In time, you'll come to describe it as like reading in a darkened room.

You sit, leafing through the pages of the book – tasting it, devouring it. And suddenly, somewhere behind you, someone throws the switch. The light floods the room and you blink, glancing up, and you wonder how, how on _earth_ you could even make out the words in the darkness, in the blackness.

_You hate fire – _andit's true. You do. It's the wake-up call; reality's echoes ringing through the very best of dreams.

But the match is like the throwing of the switch. And in the light, you see clearly, and you _know_. You pick yourself up and dust yourself off. The dream was just _that, _you see, and for once you welcome reality like the greeting of an old friend.

* * *

Winters later, with a ring upon his finger and familiar paint daubs coating yours, you invite him in and you sit by the festive glow of the fairy-lights lining the bay window.

It wasn't really real, he muses. Was it?

You shake your head. No, you don't suppose it was.

He smiles a beautiful smile, and you sit in comfortable silence, watching the world in the light of the window.

* * *

It's cold in here, he remarks.

You smile. You know.

* * *

_A/N ~ completed for Bookaholic711's writing challenge Project PULL. visit her profile for more information._


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